The Start-Up Using Machine Learning to Help Big Business

Uptake, one of America's fastest growing tech start-ups, is tapping into artificial intelligence to launch the industrial world into the modern era.

Outdated technology and the absence of crucial data is failing many companies in the sector, but machine learning could be the solution to stronger profits, said the company's president Ganesh Bell.

Bell hopes his firm, which analyzes data then issues recommendations to construction companies, can educate his clients.

"Imagine a world where every citizen in the world actually posts their status on Twitter or Facebook every second of the day, no matter what's happening, and nobody was listening. That wouldn't be fun. That's really what's happening in the industrial world," Bell said Tuesday in an interview on Cheddar.

Bell stressed that today as little as 1 percent of data available from industrial machines is being used, and that underutilization leads to premature breakdowns.

Taking note of this inefficiency, Uptake acquired Asset Performance Technologies, a company that can unlock over 20 years of data, Bell said. He added that Uptake can identify "55,000 ways of achieving a break."

"We predict when machines are going to need service, when they are going to fail based on machine learning and A.I. These are all industries like power, energy, oil and gas, construction," he said.

All of this is positive for the bottom lines of companies like Caterpillar and Berkshire Hathaway Energy, with which Uptake partners.

But Bell said consumers also should also be optimistic about Uptake's technology because of its impact on the environment.